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Aesthetic = Sensibility+Emotion

Aesthetic = Sensibility+Emotion

Chen Yan Shandong University Literature and Art Aesthetics Research Center

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It is generally believed that "aesthetics", as an independent discipline, was founded by the German philosopher Baumgarden. As early as 1735, Baumgarden first put forward the name of this subject in his dissertation "Philosophical Meditation on Poetry", and his aesthetics was published in 1750 (? Sthetik) marks the emergence of this discipline. However, this view, which has long been regarded as a "final conclusion" by academic historians, is very debatable, and it will bring at least the following two problems.

First of all, from the etymological point of view, the word sthetik comes from the Greek AES theory, and its original intention is "to feel with the senses"; In German, its more appropriate translation should be "perception" rather than "aesthetics" that Chomin Nakae later translated from Japanese. This seems to mean, can you speak German? Sthetik's translation of "aesthetics" into Chinese is suspected of mistranslation. Mr. Zhu Guangqian once expressed great regret over the translation of aesthetics into aesthetics and vice versa. In his view, it is much better to translate them into "senses" and "senses" respectively. This is because people can easily understand the word "beauty" as "beauty" [1].

Secondly, from the content, although Baum Garden divides people's psychological activities into three aspects: knowledge, emotion and meaning. It also advocates that logic studies knowledge or human rational cognitive activities, ethics studies will or moral activities, and aesthetics studies emotion or artistic activities. But if we analyze it carefully, we will find that in Baumgarden's view, human emotional activity is not an independent behavior, but only equivalent to the perceptual stage of cognition. Specifically, he believes that there are two forms of human cognitive activities: "clear cognition" and "hazy cognition". Studying the former is the task of logic, while studying the latter is aesthetics. Sthetik) task. He is in aesthetics (? Sthetik) clearly pointed out: "Aesthetic object is the perfection of perceptual knowledge". This seems to mean that Sthetik only studies the low-level stage of cognitive activities and cannot become an independent discipline. In this case, if people put the title of "father of aesthetics" on the head of Baum Garden, it will be somewhat reluctant.

After Baumgarden, Kant further opened up an independent academic space for human emotional activities. Like Baumgarden, Kant also divided human psychological activities into three aspects: knowledge, emotion and meaning, and tried to find a priori basis for the universal effectiveness of these three activities in the psychological function of the subject. In Critique of Pure Reason, he tried to find a transcendental basis for the universal validity of cognitive activities in the "concept of time and space" and "intellectual category" of human subject. In Critique of Practical Reason, he tried to find the universal basis of practical activities in the "free belief" and "rational category" of human subjects. In the book Critique of Judgment published by 1790, he tried to find the basis of universal validity for aesthetic emotional activities in the coordinated movement of human imagination and intelligence, and to find the basis of universal validity for judging lofty emotional activities in the activities of awakening rationality because of human imagination and intelligence deficiency. In other words, although Kant believes that human emotional activities do not have independent spiritual functions like scientific understanding and moral practice, they can obtain universal and effective transcendental basis in the coordinated movement of these two spiritual functions. Therefore, just as Critique of Judgment becomes a bridge between pure rational criticism and practical rational criticism, human emotional activities become a link between cognitive activities and practical activities.

Here, Kant and Baumgarden have at least two important differences. First of all, in the title of the book, Kant does not call his works aesthetics (? Sthetik), but named "Critique der Urteilscraft". Secondly, in terms of content, the book does not regard human emotional activities as a low-level stage of cognitive activities, but as an intermediary link between cognitive activities and ethical activities.

Why didn't Kant follow Baumgarden's example and name the book Aesthetics? Sthetik)？ Because in his view, human emotional activities are not as superficial as "feeling" or "perceptual" behavior. The reason why he didn't follow Baumgarden's thought and regarded emotional activities as the primary stage of cognitive activities was related to the position of Critique of Judgment in its system of critical philosophy. In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant solved the inevitability of human cognitive activities. In Critique of Practical Reason, Kant solved the problem of freedom of human practical activities. Later, Kant found that there was an unfathomable gap between the inevitable perceptual field and the free extrasensory field, which separated the two worlds. It is in order to bridge this gap and build a bridge between pure rational criticism and practical rational criticism that Kang Decai wrote Critique of Judgment. He believes that "judgment" is related to both "intellectuality" and "rationality"; It is related to both "regularity" and "purpose"; Therefore, it can become an intermediary between the "perceptual world" and the "super-perceptual world"; People may move from "necessity" to "freedom".

In the first volume of Critique of Judgment, this transformation is accomplished through "analysis of beauty" and "analysis of sublimity". Aesthetic feeling moves people, and sublimity leads people. The former is associated with limited objects and is obtained through the coordinated movement of "imagination" and "intellectuality", thus being associated with "necessity"; The latter is related to the infinity of objects in quantity or strength. Because "imagination" and "intellectuality" can't grasp these infinite objects, they awaken the power of "reason" and are related to "freedom". The acquisition of "aesthetic feeling" and "sublime feeling" is a subjective and purposeful judgment, that is, a perceptual judgment. In the second volume of Critique of Judgment, this kind of judgment will continue to be completed through the transition of "objective purpose judgment", that is, teleological judgment. In Critique of Teleology, Kant first discusses the teleology of animal and plant organisms, and then discusses the teleology of the whole nature. He believes that the purposeful characteristics of nature are not the result and foundation of scientific understanding, but can be used as a "guiding principle" to inspire people to explore the world; As a concentrated expression of the purposeful characteristics of nature, "man" has become the ultimate goal and moral entity of the whole nature. In this way, Critique of Pure Reason is finally connected with Critique of Practical Reason through the transition of Critique of Judgment.

Although Kant's subjective motivation in writing Critique of Judgment is to get through the relationship between pure rational criticism and practical rational criticism, thus building a bridge of "emotional judgment" between human's "scientific understanding" and "ethical practice", it objectively opens up an independent activity space for human's emotional activities. With this independent activity space, it is possible to establish an independent subject attribute, no matter whether the subject should be called "aesthetic", "perceptual" or something else. In other words, although Baum Garden pioneered the use of "aesthetics (? Sthetik) marks the existence of a discipline, but his view that aesthetic activities are "the perfection of perceptual knowledge" does not provide a legal basis for the independent existence of this discipline; Although Kant did not use "aesthetics (? Sthetik flaunted his own exploration, but his research results objectively laid an independent disciplinary foundation for human emotional activities including aesthetics. In this sense, if "aesthetics" should really exist as an independent discipline, the "father of aesthetics" should not be Baum Garden, but Kant. Or to say the least, if Baum Garden must be called "the father of aesthetics", Kant is the "mother of aesthetics"-although he didn't give the subject a surname, he gave birth to its body.

After Baumgarden, Hegel used the word "aesthetics" again. Aesthetically, he regards "beauty" as a link of self-generation, self-development, self-denial and self-regression of his "absolute concept" and defines it as "beauty is the perceptual expression of the concept". He believes that the "absolute concept" as the world noumenon, through the logical journey of its own development, denies that it has been "externalized" into an objective world and developed into a human being through inorganic substances, organic substances, plants and animals; As the highest stage of externalization of "absolute idea", people need to return to "absolute idea" through art, religion and philosophy to complete their logical journey of "negation of negation": art is the expression of "absolute idea" in the perceptual state, religion is the symbol of "absolute idea" in the hazy state, and philosophy is the expression of "absolute idea" in the logical state. In this way, human emotional activities with art as the core have become a link in its philosophical system. Just different from Kant, in Hegel's view, human's "emotional activity" is no longer the intermediate link between "scientific understanding" and "ethical practice", but the primary form of human spirit's transition to "absolute idea".

Specifically, Hegel called early human art "symbolic art". At this time, the "absolute concept" contained in art is still in the hazy stage, and it can only be symbolized in some perceptual forms, so the phenomenon that form is greater than content appears. Then, the "absolute concept" began to mature, but it has not yet developed into a logical form, and it is most suitable to be expressed in a perceptual form, so it entered the stage of "classical art". At this time, the art is most in line with the standard that "beauty is the perceptual manifestation of ideas". However, the "absolute concept" did not stop its development process, but further transitioned to the "romantic art" stage. At this time, the "absolute concept" has gradually evolved from an image to an idea, and began to leave art, and then developed into religion and philosophy. It is not difficult to see that Hegel's "aesthetics" serves his objective idealism philosophy system, but it also involves the dialectical relationship between sensibility and rationality in human emotional judgment. More importantly, Hegel continued to use Baumgardens' concept of "aesthetics", which not only objectively further consolidated Baumgardens' position in academic history, but also strengthened the subject of "aesthetics".

However, in what sense did Hegel use the concept of "aesthetics"? He himself made it clear from the beginning: "These speeches are about aesthetics; Its object is a vast field of beauty, more precisely, its scope is art, or it is the art of beauty. For this phenomenon,' estek' (? The term "sthetik" is really not entirely appropriate, because the more precise meaning of "isttik" is the science of studying feelings and emotions. It is in this sense that aesthetics began to become a new science in the Wolff School, or more precisely, a department of philosophy. In Germany at that time, people usually viewed works of art from the emotions that they should evoke, such as joy, surprise, fear and pity. Because the name' istik' is inappropriate, to be more precise and superficial, some people want to find another name, such as '(Kallistik). However, this name is not appropriate. Therefore, let's use the name' easttik', because the name itself is irrelevant to us. Since it has been adopted by the common language, there is no harm in keeping it. The correct name of our science is' philosophy of art', or more precisely,' philosophy of beauty'. [2] In this way, although Hegel still followed the concept of Baum Garden, he gave the word "aesthetics" a different meaning: "philosophy of art". This kind of "aesthetics" excluding the category of "natural beauty" is obviously narrower, more concentrated and more professional than Baum's gardens and Kant's. This seems to mean that the aesthetic problem is, or at least mainly, an artistic problem; On the other hand, the problem of art is also, or mainly, an aesthetic problem.

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However, the problem is not so simple. With the development of human artistic practice, the reciprocal relationship between aesthetics and art has been gradually broken. When we look through a history of western art, we can easily find that before Baumgarden, Kant, Hegel and their times, the main works of art in Europe did or mainly appeared in the form of beauty. Whether it's sculpture in ancient Greece and Rome, painting in Renaissance, baroque architecture or classical music, they are all oriented to the pursuit of harmony, which is why Hegel used the concept of "the art of beauty". However, since the emergence of romanticism and realism at the end of 19 and the beginning of the 20th century, the originally harmonious art world has been involved in the historical whirlpool of sublimity and absurdity, and the modernism trend of thought since then has increasingly dragged absurdity and ugliness into the art palace. Faced with Beethoven's Destiny, Rodin's The Old Prostitute, Balzac's Human Comedy, Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil, Picasso's guernica and Beckett's Waiting for Godot, it is obviously inappropriate to use the concept of beauty to describe art again. As the commentator said: "The view that art and beauty are the same is the root of all the difficulties we encounter in art appreciation, even for those who are very sensitive to aesthetic concepts. When art is no longer beautiful, the assumption that art equals beauty is like an unconscious prosecutor. Because art doesn't have to be beautiful, but we don't always make it very clear. When we look at this issue from a historical or social perspective, we all find that art is usually an unattractive thing, both in the past and now. " [3] Thus, the concept of "the art of beauty" first used by Francisco da Holland in Portuguese during the Renaissance was later carried forward by Hegel in German and fell into a historic crisis.

In order to save this crisis and keep the corresponding relationship between "aesthetics" and "art", some aesthetic workers have concocted a concept of "generalized beauty". They believe that "aesthetics" is indeed a theory to study "beauty", but this kind of beauty is broad, including not only "beauty" in a narrow sense characterized by harmony, but also "sublime", "funny", "absurd" and even "ugly", which can be called "aesthetic category". However, as some scholars have pointed out, "this broad concept of beauty has nothing to do with the daily usage of the word beauty, because such a concept of beauty is all-encompassing (thus showing its emptiness), and it even includes all objects that people will definitely call ugly in daily language-because how to define a term can only be decided by the theorists who define it." [4] Since the correspondence between "beauty" and "art" is only accidental, historical and non-essential, then aesthetics should not be a "theory of beauty", but should be understood as "philosophy of art": "Whether an artist's artistic works are beautiful or ugly is not a question worthy of philosophical thinking; The question worth thinking about is: the imagination and creativity of artists' works are not divided into beauty and ugliness. " [5] In this way, "aesthetics" as "philosophy of art" is no longer a subject about "beautiful art", but a subject about "imagination and creativity" of art. In fact, there are not a few people who hold this view in the West. "Modern aesthetics is gradually equivalent to philosophy of art or art criticism theory." [6]

In view of this view, some scholars think that we should go back to? The original intention of something. Hetik reduced "aesthetics" to "sensibility": "Western language aesthetics (? Sthetik, Esthétique, aesthetics) is originally a perceptual science. The so-called aesthetics is the main orientation of modern westerners after their narrow choice of sensibility. The origin and one-sided development of aesthetics is also the theoretical expression of human immaturity. The aristocratic tendency of aesthetic culture, the disadvantages of aesthetic complex, the bias of aesthetics, the narrowness of theoretical research, the rise of judging ugliness in modern and contemporary international literary trends, and the dogmatism and vulgarization of aesthetics all show that to expand human judgment, beauty and ugliness must be judged, and aesthetics needs the absorption, supplement and nourishment of perceptual science. " [7]

So what is the content of "perception"? Is it a subject about "imagination and creativity" like the so-called "philosophy of art"? If so, it seems that these two views can be merged. However, even so, we still have the following questions: First, can human emotional problems be attributed to "the perfection of perceptual knowledge"? Second, can "imagination and creativity" cover the essential characteristics of art? The former involves whether aesthetics can be independent from philosophical epistemology, and the latter involves whether aesthetic research can cover the essence of art.

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Based on the above contributions of Baumgarden, Kant and Hegel, the author advocates a compromise attitude. First of all, in Baum's garden, we should absorb his concept of "aesthetics" and pay attention to people's sensibility and sensory ability. Because no matter how narrow the concept of "aesthetics" is, it has been accepted by scholars. No matter how superficial the word "sensibility" is, it is also the premise of all emotional judgments. Secondly, in Kant's view, it is necessary to absorb the spiritual essence of his Judgment and open up an independent space for human emotional activities. Because beauty, magnificence, sublimity, absurdity and ugliness are all human emotional judgments, which are different from cognitive activities and practical activities, and have independent mechanisms and theoretical space. Finally, in Hegel's place, we should absorb his concern and persistence in artistic issues. Because art is an aesthetic problem after all, and it is also the most concentrated, complicated and prominent embodiment of human emotional problems. To sum up, we advocate unifying the name of Baum Garden with Kant's reality and Hegel's research object. In this way, "aesthetics" has become a subject about human "emotional judgment", and its main research object is "artistic problems"

Now, we will discuss this logical order in reverse. First of all, what is the key to the "art problem"? As some scholars have understood, is it "imagination and creativity"? I think so, but not all. It is true that any artistic work needs imaginative and creative participation, but the purpose of this participation is not to renovate the form, but to create a complex and subtle emotional experience. Although this experience is not necessarily beautiful, it may be sublime, funny, absurd and even ugly. "Tolstoy's point of view is:' infectivity is not only a definite symbol of art, but also the degree of infection is the only criterion to measure the value of art.' Mr. Lu Xun once said:' Literature and theory are different, so theory makes people think and literature makes people feel beautiful.' This feeling can of course be aesthetic, ugly, painful, sad, angry, scared and so on. "[8]

So, how do human emotions happen? To answer this question, we need to go back to Baumgarden's knowledge, emotion and meaning dichotomy about human psychological activities. But different from Baum Garden, we don't think that human emotional activities are only the low-level stage of cognitive activities, but we think about emotional judgments in the relationship between knowledge and meaning and between cognition and practice under the inspiration of Kant. On the one hand, emotion is not independent of the object, but based on the feeling and understanding of the objective object. In this way, emotional judgment is bound to be related to cognitive activities. On the other hand, the generation of emotion is not unrelated to the subject, but directly related to the subject's desire and will. In this way, emotional judgment is bound to be linked with practical activities. Specifically, when we feel and realize that the objective object conforms to the subjective desire and will, we will have a positive emotion, such as aesthetic feeling and lofty feeling. When we feel and realize that the objective object deviates from the subjective desire and will, we will have a negative emotion, such as ugliness and absurdity. In short, emotion comes from the necessary tension between objective and subjective, feeling and desire, knowledge and will, not just "the perfection of perceptual knowledge". In other words, emotional activities should be related not only to cognition, but also to will, which is the result of the forward or backward, positive or negative relationship between objective regularity and subjective purpose.

It should be noted that this relationship is complex and its emotional content is varied: there are sadness and joy, sadness and joy; There is love, there is hate, and there is also love and hate intertwined; There are beauty, ugliness, beauty and ugliness; Some are masculine, some are feminine, and some are both rigid and soft. From the perspective of * * *, the artistic value of a work depends largely on the complexity of people's emotions; From a diachronic point of view, the more human beings develop in the future, the more complicated the emotions contained in their artistic works will be.

If we ask further: in what form does the work of art carry and trigger this complex emotion? It's an image! Just as works that can't arouse emotions are not works of art, texts without images are not works of art. In this way, images, like emotions, become an indispensable part of works of art and an essential attribute of art. In fact, besides images, concepts can also carry human emotions, but such emotions are often clear, definite and simple, so they are not satisfactory. From the perspective of semiotics, the concept of "logical symbol" is highly abstracted from concrete experience, but it gradually loses its original complexity in the process of obtaining clarity. Obviously, this abstract result is beneficial to scientific expression, but not to artistic expression. In order to restore the richness of this emotion, people need to use more primitive forms such as sound, melody, color, lines, movements and gestures to compile and create an emotional form that transcends symbols, which is the origin of artistic "image"; Even in literary creation with language as the carrier, the original "logical symbol" should be upgraded to "emotional symbol"-literary image through special means such as clever use and superposition of rhetoric and transformation and transcendence of grammar. Only in this way can we produce a kind of poetry that is incoherent and endless in meaning.

In the final analysis, logical symbol is a conceptual system with clear connotation and extension and fixed grammatical rules. It is not only valid, but also reusable. Emotional image is a symbolic system with vague connotation and extension and no fixed grammatical rules. Not only must it be original, but it cannot be reused. In this way, artistic creation first involves people's perceptual experience and image creation, so it is a "perceptual" problem. However, it is not only a question of "sensibility" but also a question of "judgment" or "emotionalism" as to how the images created by artists independently and never used can move people's emotions and produce what Kant called "universal validity without concept".

Without "image", "emotion" cannot be expressed; Without emotion, image is meaningless. The former is "meaningful form" and the latter is "meaning behind form". Because "image" and "emotion" are as inseparable as two sides of a copper coin, "sensibility" and "emotionalism" are also inseparable, and they are collectively called "aesthetics".

It should be noted that we regard "aesthetics" as the sum of "sensibility" and "emotionalism". Although art is the main research object, it does not rule out the emotional connection between man and nature outside art. Like art, this connection may be relaxed, cheerful, beautiful, tense, intense and sublime, or it may be contradictory, contradictory and absurd. This complex and diverse "emotion", like art, must be obtained through "image".

Etymologically, it is not groundless to regard "aesthetics" as the sum of "sensibility" and "emotionalism". Hegel once clearly pointed out: "The more accurate meaning of' aesthetics' is the science of studying feelings and emotions." It's just that Baum Garden emphasizes feeling and ignores emotion, Kant emphasizes feeling and ignores feeling, and Hegel turns the problem of feeling and emotion into the problem of expression of ideas on the basis of his objective idealism philosophy. Now, it is time for "feeling" and "emotion" to return to their original positions in "aesthetics".

(originally published in Aesthetics 20 10 No.3)

[1] Have you seen Croce's aesthetic principle? Introduction to Aesthetics, Foreign Literature Publishing House, 1983, p. 167, with notes.

[2] Hegel's Aesthetics, The Commercial Press, 1979, p. 3-4.

[3] Quoted from Judy: Contemporary Western Philosophy of Art, People's Publishing House, 1994, p. 4.

[4] Wang Zuzhe "On the Non-essential Relationship between Beauty and Art", "Literature, History and Philosophy", No.6, 2003.

[5] Wang Zuzhe "On the Non-essential Relationship between Beauty and Art", "Literature, History and Philosophy", No.6, 2003.

[6] Quoted from Judy: Contemporary Western Philosophy of Art, People's Publishing House, 1994, p. 3.

[7] Luan Dong "On Perception", The Commercial Press, 1999 edition, "Introduction".

[8] Yang Shousen Literature: What is Beauty? Wen Shizhe, No.4, 2008.

Publisher: student, last modified on 2013-06-0415:16: 59.0.

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